“Thanks for the reminder. See? This is why I question Rhett’s behavior. It’s out of my realm of experience.”
Eve laughed. “I think you just need to enjoy the fact that your husband is so into you. Though now when I look at him I’m going to be watching to see if he’s popping Viagra or something. Two hours? What the hell?”
“He’s twenty-five,” Shawn reminded her. “He is erect or semi-erect on average eighteen hours a day.”
“I’m going to puke,” was Eve’s opinion.
Harley came rushing back to the table and dropped into a chair, her eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” Shawn asked her.
“Cooper’s here.”
Uh-oh. “Your boss?”
“Yes. He’s dancing.”
Cooper Brickman was a man-whore driver who Harley had just started working for as a nanny/prison guard for his obnoxious twelve-year-old niece. It was safe to say Harley had a King Kong–size crush on him, though he seemed like the last person on earth she would be interested in. But there was no accounting for attraction. Shawn was just worried she was doomed to unrequited lust.
“So dance with him,” was Eve’s suggestion.
“He’s my boss!” Harley looked aghast and downed half her rum runner in one gulp. “I can’t dance with him! Besides, he’s dancing with Charity. I need another drink.”
“You might want to sip the next one,” Shawn suggested. “And tell Charity you have a thing for him so she isn’t horning in. You shouldn’t have to sit here and watch them dancing together.” She could see them out there on the crowded dance floor. Charity was engulfed in Cooper’s octopus grip, his hands lower on her back than was strictly appropriate.
“You’re identical twins and he’s hitting on Charity. Don’t you think that means he’s actually interested in you?” Eve asked.
“No! There is nothing identical about Charity and me.” And she crossed her arms over her chest in a clear signal that she wanted to pout about it, not talk about it.
Danny and Sammy came back over, tossing back their hair and laughing. “Come on, we’re riding the mechanical bull! Who’s in?”
“I’ll do it,” Eve said, tossing a smirk her way. “And I dare Shawn to do it.”
Damn it. One of these days she was going to pass on a dare. She was going to be mature enough to realize it didn’t matter in the slightest if she didn’t rise to the bait. That her worth as a human being was not based on how many challenges she could accept and accomplish.
That day was not today.
This was her bachelorette party and she was not going to be shown up. So she shrugged in total nonchalance. “I’ll do it. It looks easy.”
Eve laughed. “Talking smack, huh? Twenty bucks says you can’t stay on for forty-five seconds.”
Shawn tried to remember her previous experiences watching other women ride the bull at various bars around town. Usually they took it easy on them, preferring the setting that bounced the bull up and down, creating a crowd-pleasing breast jiggle. Once she’d had the misfortune to see a woman get tossed off in a miniskirt, flashing the whole bar her girl bits. Shawn was wearing jeans, and she had enough strength in her thighs from playing volleyball and doing yoga that she was confident she could hang for forty-five seconds.
“No problem.” She turned to her sisters-in-law. “Who wants to lay down their money? Me or Eve, who can stay on the bull longer?”
“Oh, Lord,” Harley mumbled.
Purses were flung open and money was waved around.
Shawn eyed the bull from across the room and sized up her competition. Eve had the advantage of wearing jeans with some spandex in them. Otherwise, it was a level field.
She cracked her knuckles and strode over to sign the waiver.
• • •
RHETT watched his brother-in-law going for some kind of basketball shooting record and decided he was bored out of his mind. He didn’t want a bachelor party with strippers or to wind up puking in the backseat of Jared’s car, but hell, he wanted something a little more exciting than an adult-oriented arcade. His sister’s husbands all had kids and didn’t get a night to themselves very often, so they were all pumped to be drinking beer and playing Skee-Ball, but Rhett was feeling understimulated. Nolan didn’t look to be having that great of a time either, though he had managed to score a boatload of tickets off the water pistol game.
“What do you think the girls are doing?” he asked Nolan, when his brother came strolling over to him, tickets dangling out of his back pocket like paper sausages.
“I think they’re getting drunk at the bar and egging each other on to see who can dance the most like a stripper.”
“I wish we were there to see that.” He did. Most sincerely. He missed Shawn. He didn’t want to deny her the fun of a girl’s night, but he thought they would both have more fun if they were together. “We should crash their party.”
“Are you crazy? Do you want to lose your nuts the day before you get married? Or celebrate being married, since you are already married?” Nolan shook his head. “You’ll just piss Shawn off, you know.”
“I don’t think so.” He didn’t. “She’ll think it’s funny. The guys did it in Mamma Mia and every woman in existence loves that movie.”
“Mamma Mia?”
“The musical. The dudes crash the bachelorette party.”
Nolan gave him a long sidelong glance. “I’ve never seen it. And it scares me that you have.”
“That’s because you’re like a hundred years older than me. When I was a kid, I had a pack of sisters who wanted to see every chick flick in existence. I saw Bridget Jones’s Diary at ten years old. Pretty Woman at five. Five years old.” He held one hand up to make his point. “That ain’t right. And they conned me into A League of Their Own by telling me it was a baseball movie.”
Nolan snorted. “Well, why did you go?”
“Because I didn’t have a choice. The girls were babysitting me.”
“Where was I? I feel kind of bad, little brother. I should have tried to save you from time to time.”
“You were always at the track or chasing tail.”
Nolan grunted in acknowledgment of the truth behind that. “Where was Mom?”
“I don’t know. Nailing Dad?” They looked at each other and cracked up. “That was their Saturday afternoon thing, you know.”